かきつめて見るもかひなし藻塩草
同じ雲居の煙とをなれ
同じ雲居の煙とをなれ
- Roma-ji
-
Kakitsumete miru mo kai nashi moshiogusa
onaji kumoi no keburi to o nare - English Translation
-
Gathered up and looked
at, they come to nothing—these
salt-weeds of hers; so
let them be smoke and go up
into that same sky as she
- Meaning
- Gathered up and looked at, they come to nothing—these salt-weeds; let them be smoke and go up into the same sky as she did.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Maboroshi
After weeping over her letters, Genji at last had the women tear them and put them into the fire, and they went up as smoke. He spoke this poem to himself. Kept, they might be seen by others, and they would go on unsettling him. Turning them all to smoke, he cut his ties with the world one by one. Only the year-end rite of the Buddhas' names remained, and the tale moves toward the last day of the year.
"Gathered up" is raking things together. "Come to nothing" is being of no use. "Salt-weeds" is the seaweed collected for salt-making, used here for the heaped-up letters, and it belongs with gathering and with smoke. "That same sky" is where the smoke of her pyre went. "Let them be smoke" is a command. The burning of the letters is reread as the act of sending them after her.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Prev Poem
-
Shide no yama koenishi hito o shitau tote
ato o mitsutsu mo nao madou kana - Next Poem
-
Haru made no inochi mo shirazu yuki no uchi ni
irozuku ume o kyō kazashitemu